A shelf of books was often part of the hippie scene, and I suppose many of the novelists and poets were technically beatniks, but they shaped our journey as well. I think, especially, of Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard Farina, and Gurney Norman, as well as the German Herman Hesse of an earlier era, and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Test Acid Test. There were also many non-fiction works of influence, including the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Lama Foundation’s Be Here Now.
Which authors and volumes would you add to the shelf if you were trying to give a fuller picture of the experience?
I suspect there are some fine reads that need to be recovered, and blatant self-promotion is also welcome.
This book swap’s open!
Jnana's Red Barn 
On the less literary side, there would have to be some of Timothy Leary’s writing on the shelf. 🙂
Which, of course, will point us to many others. Maybe we need to get a comprehensive non-fiction list going?
That list could be much longer. A music soundtrack would be good too.
Oh, yeah!
All the Fox Fire books!
Ah, yes! This suggests opening the field up from just fiction and poetry to get a clearer picture of the impact.
Ken Kesey & J.D. Salinger
Definitely. It’s instructive, I suppose, to see how much was built on writings that came a little earlier.
We’re always building on something that came earlier, whether it’s some form of the arts or events from history or scientific discoveries or even family history, aren’t we? The past instructs the present, shapes the future. We can’t escape it, but we can use it to make our world a better place to be.
Both Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts helped shape my journey back in the day…and have remained traveling companions of mine ever since.
Now you have me wondering about “Tibetan Book of the Dead” and “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Were those also included?
Oh definitely! Although, at the time, I found reading the Book of the Dead a daunting task. It wasn’t until later on that I more fully grasped it’s significance as a tool for the living as well as the dead. And for his part, Suzuki Roshi’s book had a profound impact on my life, but that wasn’t until the early ’80s for me…
The Whole Earth Catalog, Magister Ludi (aka The Glass Bead Game) Siddhartha, Stranger in a Strange Land. Lord of the Rings (and Bored of the Rings)…
It looks like you’ve got most of them covered. Most are favorite authors of mine.
We keep turning up more. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “Blue Highways,” and the “Don Juan” series popped up in casual conversation.
On the food side, there was the Zen Macrobiotic cookbook, too.
Part of the problem is defining the period. I would include “The Moosewood Cookbook” and “The Vegetarian Epicure”, but both are later works; The Guitar’s Friend came out c. 1976, and is technically a catalog, but it fits…
Oh, definitely. Don’t think anyone’s mentioned Euell Gibbons of “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” and the rest of his series, either.
Part of the problem of writing and book publishing has always involved a time delay. A minimum of two years, start to finish.
“See this picnic table? Many parts are edible.”
Here’s an oddity for you, but I think it fits. The Festival Songbook. I’ve
owned a copy forever, but it was published in ’73 and you can see it here:
The bulk of the book is made up of photographs and scores; a most excellent document.
Another–if not already listed–that should be on the list is Baby Let Me Follow You Down (again, I’ve had my copy forever), a history of the folk movement and its people:
Two lovely volumes to add, definitely. Along with “Rise Up Singing,” compiled by Peter Blood and Annie Peterson.
Eric von Schmidt was one of those voices who should have been better known, if some early recordings are any indication. I’ll be thinking of that collection tomorrow night while singing in a chorus outside a boathouse along the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge.
Yep. Got my copy of Rise Up, as well. I also have an earlier, related work–Winds of the People–that was given to us as a wedding gift many years ago. The cover has fallen off that one, but it’s still good.
Oh, my. You play guitar too? Or are we doing this a cappella?
Q: How do you get a guitar player to shut up?
A: Put sheet music in front of him.
Yep. I have multiple guitars, but my best buddy among them is a 1974 OO-18 I picked up for a *comparative* song in the late ’70s. See: http://lawschoolissoover.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/almost-perfect-4-enduring-near-perfection/
Though there’s nothing wrong with doing things Aculpulco, either.
That’s it, now we get a Martin invasion, which will no doubt prompt a debate about the Great Fire and the loss of all that seasoned rare wood.
Now there’s something that would no doubt go on a timeline of the hippie era.
And Acapulco, of course, is usually followed by “gold.”
By the way, my best friend from high school had a Martin. I was playing a cheap violin